I have been doing mailings for many years now. I have used a local mailing house, a few out of town mailing houses and last year I tried Mail Shark. When I have used the 2 out of town places as well as Mail Shark, I have gotten really low response rates (around 1%). When I have used my local mailing house I’ve gotten a much better response rate (avg. 3-5% each week). I was pretty happy with my local mailing house when I was using them but they had raised their rates and it was getting to where it was almost as much as me buying stamps and doing them myself. So about 4 months ago I decided one week to do my own postcards. The results were great! I got around a 7% return. Ever since I have been doing my own and seeing the similar results week after week. I feel that the biggest reason for the increased response rates is that by doing the postcards myself, I can control which day they hit the houses. I mail them out on Wednesday and they are in the mail boxes on Thursday. They arrive just in time for the weekend when more people are ordering pizza. With saturation mailings you really have no way to control exactly which day the postcards hit the mailboxes. My local mailing house could get it close to the day I wanted most of the time, but it wasn’t an exact science. Sometimes it could take up to 4 or 5 days.
So to sum up my experiences, I have found that I have had the most success by doing my own mailings and paying the extra postage. I mail out around 1,000 postcards a week. They really don’t take me that long to do. I print out the labels and buy the post card stamps Monday afternoon. I then have my employees help me put the labels and stamps on them when it’s slow in the shop. When you have a couple of people helping you it doesn’t take long at all. Like I said before, the key to getting a higher response rates is by ensuring that my postcards hit the mailboxes on a Thursday or Friday. And the only way to guarantee that is by doing them myself.
Here’s some stats comparing what it cost to do my own compared to when I was using Mail Shark:
Mail Shark’s price is $299 a week for 1000 pieces (includes printing & postage) = $0.30 each.
Cost for me to do them myself:
1,000 postcards cost me $22.34
1,000 labels = $7.83
1,000 postcard stamps = $280
Total cost = $310.17 a week. ($0.31 each)
I was seeing around a 1% return with Mail Sharks.
For the last 4 months I have been doing my own mailings and seeing an average of 5%-7% return.
To do them myself, it cost me $10 a week more to do my weekly postcard mailings than what Mail Shark charged, and I’m generating an average of $800 a week more in sales from them.
